Saudi Arabia’s hawkish young crown prince has made it clear that his patience is wearing thin. He has accused Iran of waging proxy wars across the Arab world, through Shiite groups in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Bahrain. In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” he repeated his assertion that Ayatollah Khamenei is the Middle East’s “Hitler” and must be stopped before it’s too late. “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb,” bin Salman said in the interview, which aired Sunday. “But without a doubt, if Iran developed…

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE WASHINGTON — As of early evening, no senior staffer or Cabinet member left the Trump administration on Friday. For most White Houses, that fact wouldn’t top a story, or even rate a mention. For this particular administration, on this particular Friday, it qualified as headline material. The rumor mill has been working overtime in Washington for the past two days, after a week of big departures and vague teases from President Donald Trump…

If strategic relationships crave stability and dependability, the connection between the United States and its longtime Middle East ally Saudi Arabia has faced more than the usual challenges in the past year – perhaps especially in the last two weeks. But with Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, coming next week to assess ties with the Trump administration and the country beyond, he no longer needs to conduct a desperate search for a new White House point man to replace the president’s demoted son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Instead, the…

President Donald Trump’s longtime personal aide John McEntee has been fired and is under investigation by the Secret Service for serious financial crimes, according to two federal law enforcement officials. McEntee’s security clearance had been “in limbo for some time,” one of the officials added. Sources close to McEntee, a 27-year-old former football player for the University of Connecticut, said he struggled with a gambling addiction and they believe the investigation may be related. One of those sources said McEntee’s firing was abrupt and that he was asked to leave…

President Donald Trump’s longtime personal aide John McEntee is out at the White House, marking yet another departure in an executive office marked by a revolving door of hirings and firings. CNN reported that McEntee was fired because he is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes, and that he still had not received security clearance for his work. NBC has not confirmed that report. He will take a job with Trump’s re-election campaign, the campaign said Tuesday morning in a release. McEntee was by…

First Read is your briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day’s most important political stories and why they matter WASHINGTON — Thursday was Vintage Trump. In the span of a few hours, President Trump and the White House announced 1) new tariffs on steel and aluminum (with exceptions for Canada and Mexico), and 2) that they had accepted an invitation to meet face-to-face with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The moves were bold, brash and big. But they also were two breathtaking gambles that…

This article originally appeared in the Feb. 12, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine. When the nonprofit Space Foundation began devoting the first day of its annual Space Symposium to cybersecurity in 2010, the forum was unclassified. In recent years, however, the event has been restricted to U.S. citizens with Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information or code-word clearance. The change allows participants to move beyond venting about generic cyber threats and “get down to the nitty gritty to talk about solutions,” said Brendan Curry, Space Foundation vice president for Washington operations. On…